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Author
Topic: "Remember AIDS?" (Read 2821 times)

Interesting article on the evolution of how HIV and AIDS is covered in American pop-culture.

It's pretty pedestrian and glosses over a lot of details, but it is sort of a decent overview of how HIV has and is seen in the U.S. current media.

I did like this one part:

One curious aspect of the Lazarus effect is the advertising industryís role in the normalization of AIDS through optimistic, sometimes downright glamorous portrayals of medication. Alicea: "If you watch TV in the early evening, you see ad after ad for medications. Rarely do you see people who are sick; theyíre running around having healthy, normal lives." As for print ads in the gay community, "... even the term cocktail is interesting. We talk about them as if itís some kind of recreational or fun thing. The more I hear the word, the more I worry about what it says to people. It sounds fun; not that it has side effects or what it might be doing long term to their bodies. We donít know what the long term effects are."

I detest HIV medication advertisements, and have hated them ever since Clinton began allowing pharmaceutical companies to make them. I do whatever I can not to read or look at them. They're nothing but a big ole kick in the teeth to me.

I, too, am offended by ads for HIV drugs. In any issue of POZ, you can see smiling, handsome, athletic young guys in these ads. They look like pictures of good health.

These ads do much harm. They minimize the seriousness of this disease and create an impression that HIV isn't that big a deal. They are a dangerous form of disinformation and miseducation. It is an unfortunate situation, but it will undoubtedly continue as long as magazines directed at people with HIV depend on the drug companies for advertising revenue.

A few years ago the pages of POZ magazine and A&U were full of such advertising from the drug companies and the viatical industry. Both industries promised us a better life through the use of their product lines. I am still waiting for the day when I can walk hand-in-hand on a tropical beach because I use their products One such company, out of Chicago did not have a huge advertising budget so they used stock photos. One of the models in that ad saw his photo, felt that ad pictured him as a person living with HIV and sued the viatical company client.

As a former client of said viatical settlement company, I was visited on fine afternoon by the FBI, with a Grand Jury summons and was expected to be in Chicago for the event. In my statement to the agents, I said, I had been promised a better life through the use of this advertisers product, POZ and A&U magazines were the only resources for new information and dependent upon the revenue of this advertising to be able to continue to provide such a service. Travel was very difficult for me in those days and after faxing my files to the FBI and the Grand Jury, I was eventually released from having to appear.

You and I as people who have worked in the media know, it is only advertising with a target audience. But, as a member of that target audience, I wanted that better life as promised in the advertising and never got it. Have he best dayMichael

One of the nifty things about living in the Land of the Long Weekend is that advertising prescription drugs to the public is prohibited. No dentally splendid handsome young things mountain climbing with nary a hollow cheek in sight adorn our AIDS glossies.

very true.. how many advertisers show someone running to the bathroom because the medication gives them extreme diarrhea? lost of appetite? I pooped my pants in a cab on my way to dinner once. very embarrassing.

also, I met a guy a few years ago who wanted me to infect him. Was seeking asylum here in the states from his country. having to take HIV meds for the rest of his life was a non-issue. "people don't die from AIDS if they are taking medication"..... He was very young. The younger generation does not remember AIDS.

Personally I feel there should be more advertisement portraying what HIV/AIDS can STILL do to us if we don't act responsibly.

oh, and the boy who wanted me to infect him??....God only knows, but it wasn't through me.

One such company, out of Chicago did not have a huge advertising budget so they used stock photos. One of the models in that ad saw his photo, felt that ad pictured him as a person living with HIV and sued the viatical company client.

I detest HIV medication advertisements, and have hated them ever since Clinton began allowing pharmaceutical companies to make them.

WTF??? Bill Clinton had nothing to do with the birth of DTC pharma ads, and his FDA head David Kessler opposed them.

As for the kvetching about pharma ads aimed at HIVers, we're really victims of our own success. We fought for over a decade for HIV/AIDS to be normalized in many respects, and we'd be mad as hell if the impression was given to non-HIVers--who might be our co-workers and employers, too--that our life-extending meds were a sure recipe for diminished capacity and productivity.